California

I have always believed that the Poet of the New World—of the World—was to come out of the West—from California. Why not? Would it be more strange that this broad land by the shores of the vast Pacific should produce the Supreme Singer, than that a little Island of the far Atlantic should have given birth to the Bard of Avon—to that kinglier brow than ever wore a crown?

For California is a Poem! The land of romance, of mystery, of worship, of beauty and of Song. It chants from her snow-crested, cloud-bannered mountain-ranges; it hymns thro' her forests of sky-reaching pine and sequoia; it ripples in her flowered and fruited valleys; it thunders from her fountains pouring, as it were, from the very waters above the firmament; it anthems from the deeps of the mightiest ocean of the world; and echoes ever in the syllables of her own strangely beautiful name,—California.

The spell of enchantment which she wove about me from the day when—a little child—I entered her borders thro' the rocky mountain-pass from the long trail across the great plains, was not lessened by the after-vision of the Southland grape and fig, orange and pomegranate,—or the (so-called) deserts of sand and cacti, which the spring months covered with a carpet of bloom rivalling the richest dyes of the Persian looms. Rather has it increased with the passing of time.

And then she is, as our brothers of France would say, of such a Bigness; is so stupendous! Surely, of her, greatness only should be born: why not the greatest of all,—the Master Singer?

With all this mind-enwoven, it was but natural, when in after years I was asked by the University of California to contribute a poem for its Commencement Day, that I should seek to voice my belief. How inadequate the expression to the inner song only I may fully realize. Yet am I glad that the first Commencement Poem to be written by a woman for any university, is of, and bears the name of California.